Anyways, I was wondering what the distinction between the RPG and Wargame editions are. I can't find a distinctive features table comparing the two, or any specific features that require a second version of Battlegrounds. What features would it support that arn't in the RPG version, and vice versa? Would one be able to upgrade BRPG to get/include BWGE (?Battlegrounds: WarGame Edition?)? Would there be an 'overview map', since the battlefields can get pretty big? What about flipping double-sided counters: for example (kinda deep, but bear with my general idea) naming counters with -a or -b endings and having the software search for the -b to 'flip' it (when they're wounded/rallying/etc.)? (Actually, that kind of feature would be pretty cool in BRPG for standing/down mini's.) I know you'd have online/LAN play, what about solitare/hotseat?

I know this is kinda far on the horizen, but since there's a plethora of online-tabletop-RPG simulators out there already I'm more interested in this version at the moment (especially as it's clouded in secrecy). I saw the RPG version *could* play wargames, I'm just interested in what abilities the Wargames version would have. The cool features of BRPG (freeform, so you could play any game provided you have the rules or even create your own, and the fog-of-war feature) would make it really cool, but is there anything else on the drawing board to warrent two seperate programs (i.e., wouldn't it just be better to merge the two, or is there a lot of cool new content in Wargames)?

To make up for this new bout of questioning, I've prepared a few wargame links.http://dwarfstar.brainiac.com/ Got the OK from Reaper to post 6 of the 8 old Dwarfstar wargames, and they're pretty cool looking.PaperWorlds is the mainstay of free gaming stuff, from wargames to mini's.http://www.avalanchepress.com/index.php has a bunch of cool games, most important being Panzer Grenadier. They've got free learn-to-play rules for PG, as well as a boatload of tokens; just need maps and more counters.

[edit: updates for clarity. I was on a time crunch and most of my questions came off half-cocked, sorry.]
~lurker~

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society. -- Mark Twain

Sorry, didn't see this post and for some reason didn't get automatic notification.

Lot of questions. Fortunately, you've answered some of them yourself already. True, I haven't posted a feature list yet for Battlegrounds: Wargame Edition (which I'll call BW for short). That's because it hasn't been defined yet.

Some things I know it'll have include:
A minimap for seeing the whole battlefield at once
Counter flipping and stacking
A line-of-sight and measuring tool.
Numbered hexgrids, using a variety of numbering schemes
Support for geomorphic (tileable) maps
Modifier counters (like a "Main Gun Broken" or "Commander Killed" indicator on a tank counter).
Fog of War, in the wargaming sense (double-blind system).
An Order of Battle listing all the forces on each side in the scenario, used during initial deployment and/or reinforcements.
Board rotation.
Ability to play back game turns for an in-game or post-game review of how the conflict developed, or jump in at some point to play out "what would have happened if I'd done this instead?".
Support for solitaire play and Play By E-mail.
The ability to customize the playing board.
Will support card decks

While there is a lot of common functionality with BRPG (and I'll be able to reuse a lot of BRPG's code to drastically cut down BW's development time), I decided to break BW off into its own product because wargames have their own unique game mechanics, and they would've cluttered the simplicity of BRPG with features that RPG players would never use, and vice versa. I will probably offer BW at a discounted price to registered BRPG users.

I should also mention that I see this as a more competitve field, because some of the free tools already available are actually pretty good. I'll definitely have to offer something they don't (Mac support is a good start, since most of the existing tools are Windows-only). And, like BRPG, I suspect I'll be able outshine the competition in the graphics arena.

Those would be great features and excellent selling points for you with BRPG Wargame edition.
In fact I think alot of the things you mentioned are features that are missing or dificult to make function correctly with all the excellent freeware
-and at the same time special "goodies" gamers will want to pay for (the replay feature)

Once again these forums are a great place to gather info on what the customer wants and what the customer will be happy with when they purchase.

Double-blind is good. I even have seen a couple of fun senarios that were triple-blind. I hope this feature is in both versions!

Is there any chance that unit layout and movement could go a bit more freeform in the Wargame version? I would like to able to play WarMaster in conjunction with a Mighty Empires campaign. WarMaster (yes, it is a Games Workshop game but its fun...) requires rectangular units and free movement (ie none hex or square based).

Mighty Empires is fun but it needs house rules to give it umph. It was design as a campaign generater for that War Hammer so it never really had an end game. I've always played it as standalone game as I never had painted WH armies (come to think of it, ME is the first and only game I ever fully painted all the figures... must have liked it).

It was one of our Easter games back in my old gaming group. (Easter games actually means a game you play until you finish (usually 24-48 hours) and crash out for the next few days to recover. Of course I had two full sets and an extra set of tiles so that mean our games (with 5-6 players) where quite big. ^_^;

Of course WarMaster came out long after Mighty Empire vanished from retail but more recently on the offical WarMaster site I picked a pdf compilation of the original Mighty Empire rules plus the addons that appeared in white dwarf which they suggest using with WarMaster.

Triple-blind is three player, it could be a simple as a game like running mighty empires without each player knowing where the other two are or how fast they are expanding or something a lot more fun like a village of orks celebrating a newly aquired treasure with a bunch of dwarfs deciding to liberate it... and unknown to to the ork and dwarf players, a small elite squad of spacemarines out to recover thier holy relic. Ran in three separate rooms until they started to run across each other [don't think i was ever fully forgiven for designing that one]

mice
[some the new village and city art work in cc3 looks perfect for a ME game]

Someone emailed me with questions about the Wargame Edition. When I tried to respond, my email was returned as undeliverable ("reason: 550 5.7.1 mail from 17.148.16.74 rejected for spam/virus content"), so I'm posting my response here in the hopes that he'll see it.

Jeff wrote:You state on the main page of your site that you intended to begin development of a Tabletop Wargames version of your software some time in 2007. I was unable to find any further information on your site or in the forums directly linked by your site. I am very interested in the results of this project and would like to know where development stands at this time. Thank you for your time.

The Wargame Edition keeps getting pushed back, since the RPG Edition has taken longer to complete than I expected. There hasn't been a tremendous amount of interest expressed so far in the Wargame Edition, but hopefully that will change.

This is one of the main threads that discusses plans for it. Feel free to add specific feature requests.

You can also try running a search in these forums for the word "wargame".

Once development of the Wargame Edition begins (I'm now guessing around February 2008), I will be creating an entire subforum devoted to it.

Please help spread the word about BRPG and BGE, and never hesitate to tell me how I can make them better suit your gaming needs.

heruca wrote:The Wargame Edition keeps getting pushed back, since the RPG Edition has taken longer to complete than I expected. There hasn't been a tremendous amount of interest expressed so far in the Wargame Edition, but hopefully that will change.

Actually, most of the custom systems I would use with a VT involve elements of both RPGs and wargames. When I first started looking for a VT, I was trying to find something that would work with a small field strategy game. BRPG v1 was, and still is, one of the best options for that.

However, I'm not quite sure what you intend to put into the wargame edition exclusively. Many of the features you originally intended to include in either Wargame Edition or BRPG v2 have already been implemented into v1. In addition, pretty much all of the features mentioned in this thread have already been tentatively promised for BRPG v2.

There aren't many features used by wargames that aren't useful for RPGs, and vice versa.

heruca wrote:A minimap for seeing the whole battlefield at once

That would be useful for finding my way around any large map.

heruca wrote:A line-of-sight and measuring tool.

Already have a measuring tool, and Line of Sight is something that I've been craving ever since I heard the term "FoW".
If anything, true LoS is far more useful in RPGs than in wargames.

heruca wrote:Numbered hexgrids, using a variety of numbering schemes

This could be done using custom grids, or even a flash grid.

heruca wrote:Support for geomorphic (tileable) maps

Better tile support would make my BRPG games go much more smoothly anyway.

heruca wrote:Fog of War, in the wargaming sense (double-blind system).

You already promised the ability for the GM to see a player view from within a single client, which is essentially the same functionally.

The ability to manage permissions & privileges is all that is needed to keep the battlefield fair, which is a useful feature for RPGs too.

heruca wrote:An Order of Battle listing all the forces on each side in the scenario, used during initial deployment and/or reinforcements.

Sounds very similar to having a more powerful unit manager.

heruca wrote:Board rotation.

A nice feature, though perhaps that's the first one that isn't especially useful in most RPGs

heruca wrote:Ability to play back game turns for an in-game or post-game review of how the conflict developed, or jump in at some point to play out "what would have happened if I'd done this instead?".

Sounds similar to the game logging feature I suggested way back
Would be useful for keeping track of game history, showing off to friends, or checking out "what if" scenarios in competitive RPGs.

heruca wrote:The ability to customize the playing board.

Not sure what that means.

heruca wrote:Possibly will support card decks

Many RPGers have been asking for that

heruca wrote:Support for solitaire play

Well, BRPG is hardly the ideal platform on which to play solitaire... But it could be a flash extension, or included in the card deck support. The key features needed for solitaire would be support for hidden cards and several separate decks, which is very similar to what some RPGs might use.

Minigames are generally better as flash extensions, since they're not crucial features and flash would allow the game rules to be programmed in. In fact, there are a ton of Flash minigames on the net that would probably already work in BRPG.

heruca wrote:and Play By E-mail.

By "Play By Email", I assume you mean the ability to email turn information automatically. That could be useful for Play By Post RPGs too.

Overall, I'd say if you feel you need to isolate certain features for reason of simplification or pricing, do so by creating feature bundles, such as a "Card Deck Support Plugin", and charging for those separately, rather than creating a new platform that requires separate development.

Last edited by Omnidon on Thu Dec 20, 2007 5:53 am, edited 1 time in total.

Omnidon wrote:Overall, I'd say if you feel you need to isolate certain features for reason of simplification or pricing, do so by creating feature bundles, such as a "Card Deck Support Plugin", and charging for those separately, rather than creating a new platform that requires separate development.

</lurk>
I would have thought the main difference between a Wargame BG and BRRPG would be the lack of needing a GM for the Wargame edition. I.e. Any play could initialise the map, then all players a their own units (poosibly to a predefined limit as specified as part of the map creation process), possibly all players can add scenery additions etc etc.

Most of this BGRPG can do, it just can only be done by the GM. Which should hopefully mean heruca's development time is sorting out permissions, rather than new development...

riddles wrote:I would have thought the main difference between a Wargame BG and BRRPG would be the lack of needing a GM for the Wargame edition. I.e. Any play could initialise the map, then all players a their own units (poosibly to a predefined limit as specified as part of the map creation process), possibly all players can add scenery additions etc etc.

That's what I would expect also based on my wargaming experience.

Omnidon had a lot of good points too. (too many to quote)

As far as a Wargames FoW goes, wouldn't that require a FoW based on LoS? And this is something we all want to see in the RPG version too. I don't have time for wargames anymore, so what happens with the wargame edition isn't too important to me except for how that might impact development of the RPG edition. And, I think that the LoS-based FoW is essential to any type of VT user.

I'm new to the forums here and still learning my way through BRPG. I just wanted to pop in to introduce myself. I'm liking what I see in BRPG and would really like to see the wargames side of it get some attention.

I haven't played RPGs for years but still do some miniature wargaming and a bit other games like Battletech. Strangely enough I liked mighty empires too. I've done a couple of modified version of it for my group to play. Sadly my group really scattered over the last couple of years so I'm trying to find useful programs like this to either keep gaming with them or to find new opponents.

I'm working on a list of things I'd like to see in the wargames edition. I'm still not sure what's already possible. For the moment the comment I'll add is about customisable game boards. I think that means that the terrain features and such could be laid down at the start of the game similar to unit deployment rather than just having one player design the map ahead of time. It's fairly common to have both players help set up the table.

I don't expect to get started on developing the Wargame Edition until I wrap up v1.x of the RPG Edition.

With BRPG, only the GM can really "set up the board", since Players can't place units themselves. But for wargames, I see no reason why objects (e.g., terrain) couldn't be placed by any participant. In fact, some games probably require that functionality.

Please help spread the word about BRPG and BGE, and never hesitate to tell me how I can make them better suit your gaming needs.

For wargames I'm not sure you need the seperate GM and Players clients. If there was one client with GM like features it would probably be enough. I can see where some scenarios would be fun by using those features especially if you have a GM to design them. But most of the time people play straight up, equal values battles. So a lot of the hidden features wouldn't be necessary. FOW would definitely add an interesting element to a game that isn't normally possible Much harder to plan and prepare if there's a terrain feature blocking LOS and you don't know how the enemy is deployed.

I certainly hope so. I originally had only intended for the Wargame Edition to be used for wargames with counters, but it should also be possible to add in support for things like unit formations and gridless movement that would enable the Wargame Edition to be used for tabletop miniatures wargames, as well.

Please help spread the word about BRPG and BGE, and never hesitate to tell me how I can make them better suit your gaming needs.